It’s no surprise that Bruce Lee was intense, inboth his martial arts and his acting. The man who provided his English-dubbed voice in Lee’s masterpiece “Fist of Fury” can testify to that.

” ‘Fist of Fury’ was the toughest piece of dubbing I’d ever done in my entire dubbing career,” recalls voice actor Michael Kaye, who dubbed hundreds of characters in Hong Kong films into English during the 1970s and ’80s. “It was rather a big problem dubbing Bruce Lee movies. The first problem was the fact that Bruce Lee decided to direct the dub himself, which meant he stood behind you and hit you on the shoulders and said, ‘More passion! More anger! More more more!’ And my shoulders were getting to be a bit sore, you know?”

Kaye’sreminiscences are among the fresh content in the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray boxset “Bruce Lee’s Greatest Hits,” which is availableTuesday, July 14.

The boxset, which is loaded with extras in its seven-disc package, includesall five of Lee’s martial arts films inone set for the first time. The great news: All four of his Golden Harvest Hong Kong films — “The Big Boss,” “Fist of Fury,” “The Way of the Dragon” and “Game of Death” — boast recent 4K restorations, and they are eye-popping. His Hollywood film, the James Bondian“Enter the Dragon,”a co-production between Warner Bros. and Golden Harvest co-starring Jim Kelly and John Saxon, is presented in a watchable 2K in both a 99-minute theatrical version and a 102-minute special edition.

It’s hard to grasp what an impact Lee had on world culture. Lee, who was born in the Year of the Dragon inSan Francisco’s Chinatownand became an international cinema and cultural icon, died at 32. After “Enter the Dragon,” released a month after Lee’s death of a cerebral edema on July 20, 1973, martial arts participation in the United States shot up from a just a few million people to around 40 million.

He would have turned 80 this year on Nov. 27.

“Lee introduced the Chinese martial arts hero to the West,” says biographer Matthew Polley (“Bruce Lee: A Life”), who introduces each of the films in the Criterion set. “Previously, Chinese were houseboys, servants or evil. Lee introduced this hero archetype to the Western cinema.”

Lee’s parents relocated the family to Hong Kong when Bruce was 3 years old, and he grew up something of a child star, appearing in about 20 Cantonese-language films in the 1940s and ’50s. After embracing martial arts under the famous master Ip Man, he moved back to the U.S., first to San Francisco, then to Seattle, to complete his high school education.

Lee dropped out of the University of Washington to move to Oakland andopen a martial arts studio. Eventually, he taught martial arts to Hollywood stars such as Steve McQueen and James Coburn, and he was cast as Kato in the short-lived ABC series “The Green Hornet.”

Unable to gain a footholdin Hollywood, he returned to Hong Kong after a decade away to makea revolutionary series of martial arts films that reimagined fight choreography. “The Big Boss” became Hong Kong’s biggest box office draw ever — dethroning “The Sound of Music” — and each of his subsequent films broke that record.

A few notes about theset:

‘Game of Death’

One interesting aspect of the Criterion set is its treatment of “Game of Death.” Lee, who was to direct the film, had shot much of the end of the film before his death — about 35 minutes of an epic battle in which Lee’s character advances up five levels to reach the top and dethrone the evil martial arts king — played by NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of Lee’s real-life martial arts students.

After Lee’s death, a sort of cottage industry of “Brucesploitation” films, in which Lee lookalikes with names like Bruce Li or Bruce Le would make shoddy rip-offs of Lee films, sprung up (there’s a few of these trailers included in the extras). Many of those films were successful, and Golden Harvest finally jumped into the fray by offering audiences something the other films could not deliver: actual unseen footage of Lee.

Producers of “Game of Death,” released in 1978, constructed a bizarre story around李的角色,扮演一个大所戴的两倍ses or some sort of disguise, going up againstmobsters who include Hollywood actors Dean Jagger and Hugh O’Brian. The so-so film works better than it should, and ends with a flourish, as Lee’s final footage finishes the movie.

But “Game of Death” uses only 12 minutes of Lee’s footage. Included as an extra here is “Game of Death Redux,” produced last year by filmmaker Alan Canvan, which reconstructs all 35 minutes of Lee’s footage, with a new sound mix that incorporates John Barry’s “Game of Death” score. It’s a lovely tribute that essentially functions as a Bruce Lee-directed short film.

It’s pricey

It lists at $124.95 but can be purchased online, including atCriterion’s own site, for much cheaper. For the month of July, the cheapest sourcewill beBarnes & Noble, online and in-store, which is having a 50% Criterion sale.

And while there is a decent amount of new material, manyof the extras, including all of the commentaries, have appeared previously as extras in other home video editions of Lee films. Still, it’s good to have this material organized under one roof.

Lack of Asian voices

The biggest knock on the set,坦率地明显,是缺乏的sian perspective. One can’t discount the expertise of Polley, who has done the research, but the fact is that every introduction and every commentary is by a white man. There is a printed essay by author and critic Jeff Chang, but Criterion should have found room in the budget for at least one documentary or one commentary track (or more!) from an Asian expert on cinema that would have helped bring proper context.

ESPN provided just such a context recently with the outstanding documentary“Be Water,”directed by Bao Nguyen. Whenever that comes out on Blu-ray, it should be an instant purchase to go right alongside the Criterion set on the shelf.

‘The Way of the Dragon’

Maybe I was wowed by the 4K restoration, but I gained a new appreciation for what I’ve felt is the weakest of the core four Lee films, “The Way of the Dragon.” Set in Rome, it’s got awesome martial arts, naturally — capped by the epic battle with Chuck Norris at the Colosseum— but the silly, slapstick comedy always seemed awkward.

Lee, it turns out, was trying to broaden his image and prove that he could also play comedy (Jerry Lewis was his hero). The movie was also his directorial debut, and one can feel thekind of humanistic touch he could have brought as a filmmaker if he had the chance.

That got me to wondering: What if he would have had the money to shoot “The Way of the Dragon” in San Francisco, with the climactic battle against Norris on the Golden Gate Bridge?

Final thought

With all thetalk of statues, and what should go in the place of those that have come down, how about aBruce Lee statuein his hometown? There are Lee statues in Hong Kong and Los Angeles. Time for one in the Bay Area.

N“Bruce Lee’s Greatest Hits”:Blu-ray box set (seven discs). Available Tuesday, July 14. Criterion Collection ($124.95 list price).